The Halfakid joined me in the workshop today as we got Ol’ Paint even closer to the point of being ready to paint. We used some new attachments for the Dremel to get into some hard-to-reach spots, polished up the previously stripped areas using 3M sheets, and tapped new threads into the water bottle bosses. Finally, we removed the head badge, which had become scuffed up beyond salvation.

The new Dremel attachments worked quite well and allowed us to reach some areas that the larger fittings wouldn’t. But there are still some very tight spaces we weren’t able to reach.

This head badge has got to go

I’d hoped to keep the head badge. The record will show it entered this project unscathed. But I had already scratched it up a bit, and after the Halfakid finished cleaning up all the paint around it on the head tube, it was pretty much done in.

It just took a moment with the putty knife to remove the badge and glue, and then a couple of more minutes with the sander to get the head tube bright and shiny.

Cuttin’ threads

With the lion’s share of the sanding and polishing done, we turned our attention to the water bottle bosses. The bolts had snapped off in both these bosses. I’d tried extracting them to no avail, and so I’d drilled them out and filled the holes with JB Weld. Today we drilled 4mm pilot holes and then tapped them with a 5mm x 0.8mm tap.

The holes aren’t perfectly aligned but I think they’re close enough, and the tapping seemed to go cleanly once we got the handle tight enough. The proof of the pudding will be in the tasting, after we’ve painted the frame and try to mount a water bottle cage.

Are we done yet?

Now it’s decision time. There’s still some paint in the very hard-to-reach places. I could spend some more time to trying to chase that out (sandpaper wrapped around a popsicle stick, etc.). Or I could say it’s good enough and we’re going to go with this. The paint I’ve bought is formulated to go over existing paint, so that shouldn’t be an issue. I’ve got at least a week now to decide if I want to try more (and I could probably spend quite a few more hours getting the remaining paint) or to decide it’s good enough and to start masking before the paint.

(Without the head badge, I only need to mask the bottom bracket and the brake mounts, I think. The headset bits. I guess that’s everything.)

I’m still thinking whether to try to replace the head badge or let it go. A brief search has turned up some related head badges and decals, but nothing that was an exact match. Sometimes less is more, and the naked truth might be more attractive option in the long run.